The Shasta Gate

by Dick Croy

  Eugene was no mind-reader; he had no idea what was going on in that pretty head of hers, modestly veiled behind its curtain of hair. But he could sense a certain detachment in her manner (this amused detachment of course being her way of dealing with what at another time she might have taken personally, since she knew how necessary a light touch was now). He wondered whether his impotence was proving to be too much of a turn-off. But he sensed no judgment from her, no criticism.

  Lying thus exposed to a woman, there was very little left to hide—or at least that’s what he felt at the moment. Catherine held not just his unresponsive penis, but his very sexuality, in her hands. For some reason something wasn’t working and she had offered her help and he had accepted it. She was for the moment a sort of sexual surgeon performing open-heart surgery. Not the organ that circulates blood obviously, but the feeling heart, the emotional center of his being.

  Catherine felt his trust: a releasing of inner tension as clearly perceptible as the relaxation of the muscles in his pelvis a moment earlier when enveloped by her hands and hair and mouth. And something else was communicated, some indefinable message so subtle she perceived it only gradually, although it was as elemental as desire. Perhaps never before had a man put himself so completely into her hands—at least no man to whom she owed so much. Something entirely new in her was released.

  It began as a churning sensation in her heart, and before she knew quite what was happening it had become a palpable stream of energy. She was literally reaching out to Eugene with her heart. They were connected through an umbilical of energy, and some essential part of herself, her very lifeblood, was being drawn to him like liquid from a vessel.

  For the first time in her life she perceived how two hearts could become one—not metaphorically but in the profoundest sense possible. It was incredible! Yet as real and natural as exhaling air from the lungs, with no physical effort involved at all. She was just letting it, feeling it, happen. Some force, like gravity or magnetism, was doing the rest.

  ...Or was she the source after all? No sooner had this occurred to her than the flow of energy accelerated—and now she was consciously willing it. Could this energy be...love? A degree or dimension new to her?

  Love referred to as a force of some kind, “healing energy”, she’d always just assumed to be religious or poetic nonsense. But now she was actually directing it herself. Oh, she’d been “in love” of course, and shared with a few lovers more than just the physical side of sex, enclosing them in an emotional field that she’d always thought of as her “love”—but now that seemed like an infant’s diffuse and unfocused attention compared to a mature adult’s power of concentration. This was a conscious tool of giving, a human faculty she had never dreamed she possessed. She still lay beside Eugene, and now she took his penis, all of it, eagerly into her mouth, and heard him gasp with pleasure.

  So warm—what a delicious feeling! He struggled to free his legs, one of which was pinned beneath her, and Catherine wriggled in to let him enclose her head and that luxurious fall of hair in them. Now she had the satisfaction of feeling a response from him. The soft flaccid flesh began to firm and swell until it more than filled her mouth. He felt the organ stiffening with blind heedless resolve, like a doubting man seized by faith.

  Her hands had begun to move of their own volition, to find themselves first at the juncture of his hips and waist and then in the oval indentations of his buttocks. As his penis continued to come alive, she used one hand to guide it for her lips and tongue and the other to caress him. He had become enormous, engorged not only with his own blood but with her infusion of energy as well. It had been a long time since she was aware primarily of her lover’s needs and pleasure, instead of sinking into her own private womb/cocoon of fantasy. Yet it wasn’t as if she were thinking only of Eugene, because giving him her love like this was giving her the most exquisite pleasure she had ever experienced.

  And Eugene? He felt as though he were dematerializing, from the bottom up. From the silken warmth of her lips to this interpenetration of his very cells by those of a woman not just giving herself to him but transforming his flesh and blood to light. …He dimly realized they had entered that realm “beyond” sex, which in his fear and self-doubt a few minutes that seemed like hours ago had seemed so unattainable.

  Although some unconscious part of himself had contrived to strip him of his power and even his manhood in front of her, to leave him naked but for his soul and his humanity—as a test of her real feelings for him?—she had responded by giving herself completely, rather than turning away. He felt blessed with her. Now more than anything else in the world he wanted to give himself in return. When he reached for her to make physical the spiritual embrace they shared, he found that she shared his thoughts too: they moved together as one to consummate this one. She knelt on top of him, arched her back, and plunged him into her like a sword.

  Her head thrown back, her mouth open, Catherine froze there with only the rasping sound in her throat to distinguish her from an erotic masterpiece in marble. Then gradually, in undulation, the polished stone became flesh again. Their eyes met and he saw her love for him through a blur of tears. Her own eyes were wide and shining, full of wonder and self-awareness at the same time, as if both the child and woman had been awaken in her at once. Who was it he saw in them?

  She was more familiar to him right now than his own reflection. How long he had been looking for this woman—and how close she had always been! Her face, these eyes which drew him in beyond the face, beyond any sense of separation or distinction between the two of them, were suddenly windows to the real world he had been seeking—revealing a whole star-filled universe which cried long since forgotten rather than “new”. He couldn’t take his eyes away, nor could she.

  And then just as suddenly, with no conscious effort, he entered this world with her. Or rather, entered it through her, becoming one with her not just in the present but as if reuniting, rejoining what had always been. Now he remembered what he had been looking for so long—and why. “This is heaven,” he whispered to this woman he was simultaneously seeing and being. In the liquid rhythm of intercourse he had become part of her transformation from “marble” to flesh to the pulse which animates flesh. He was she, experiencing their lovemaking from inside her skin; he was himself again, the exchange of identities occurring effortlessly.

  He was on the threshold of some great change in his life, a transformation: the birth or resurrection of a new or old self hollowing itself out and expanding resonantly beyond the accustomed boundaries of the familiar one. The certainty of this was inseparable from the ecstasy he was sharing with Catherine.

  Then something very curious began to happen. Gradually, he became aware that he was experiencing her not as he had known her for the past week or so but as though he were going deeper into her nature, from appearance to a more substantive reality. A crushing sense of sorrow descended upon him. It was difficult to breathe. His shoulders wanted to hunch forward protectively. His stomach knotted as if to shield him/her from...what? Emotion? Pain? But this “defense” was excruciating in itself. And this extraordinary sense of intimacy was no longer an exciting if essentially passive diversion; it had become an alarming intrusion. Whatever it was, he would deal with it later. Right now he wanted nothing to interfere with the rapturous joy of their union.

  He shook the disturbing impression from his mind and rolled Catherine onto her back, amazed at how physically united they’d become, cemented by sweat and desire into a single entity. Thrusting his hands under her hips, he plunged into her as deeply as he could, her round cheeks fitting into his palms like eggs in a carton as she curled her legs tightly around him and opened herself blissfully to his final frenzy. Again and again he drove himself into her.

  Like some rare and precious alloy, her body was being heated, hammered, and hollowed out in a celestial forge. To make a vessel: her vagina a goblet, a grail, from which she was drinking an exquisite purple wine
darker and thicker than blood. It was heavenly—her thirst and desire were unquenchable. She had lost track of her orgasms, contraction followed contraction. And each one, she realized, was her own gift come back to her. She felt Eugene’s rising ecstasy, and knew that he was about to climax. But she still wasn’t prepared for the explosion that finally came. It was an eruption in which she was the volcano, she and Eugene together. She climaxed again with him—and he came as he never had before. He had visions, experienced such intense pleasure it was painful ...emptied himself, cleansed himself—delivered himself from the hollow inside tips of his fingers down to his curled toes. He didn’t just ejaculate. Every nerve end became a microscopic Old Faithful.

  And as they both lay there stunned, exhilarated and incredulous, it seemed only natural, only appropriate, that the singing they had heard here the first night should begin again—now, at this very moment. Because they knew now, for certain, that at the heart of life’s noise and static and cacophony was a fine, faint music. Nearer its source, where they had just been, it could pick you up and carry you like the wind.

  So they weren’t surprised. They looked at each other and smiled. And their smiles grew into laughter. And somehow their laughter seemed in perfect harmony with the music of celebration on the mountain.

  Chapter 37

  Pretty Boy had risen early, with only one thing on his mind this morning. His humiliation from yesterday hadn’t diminished during the night; it was more intense than ever. He’d go to any length to get back at the loner and his girlfriend, even getting up early with a terrible hangover to ride out in search of them.

  He had no idea where to begin—maybe that place halfway up the mountain where the gang had looked earlier. He didn’t think the cashier had the balls to have lied to the Fool; he was fairly certain the two of them had been up there and the gang had just missed them somehow. There was always the chance they’d returned. He pushed his bike well down the road before starting it. This was something he wanted to do on his own. If he found them he’d come back for the others.

  * * *

  “Aren’t you going to meditate this morning?” Eugene was lying on his back, his hands folded beneath his head. He’d been awake for some time.

  “Maybe you didn’t notice,” he said, turning to see Catherine’s impish grin, “but I didn’t meditate yesterday either.”

  “Oh I noticed. How did you make it through the day, with all that unrelieved tension?”

  He rolled onto his side. “If I recall, you’re the one who almost didn’t make it through the day.”

  “You don’t have to remind me. I feel like I was run over by a truck.”

  “That bad huh?”

  She nodded, then added: “But I had the most fantastic dream last night.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “It’s kind of weird.”

  “We’d all be in trouble if our dreams weren’t allowed to be weird.”

  “Yeah I guess you’re right. I think it must have come from what Roberta was talking about.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “...Ram was in it...we were riding toward Shasta. It was dark—not nighttime but really strange. Like an eclipse maybe. I asked him where the sun was and he just nodded toward the mountain. There was this pinpoint of light right in the middle of Mt. Shasta, and it kept getting bigger and bigger. It seemed as though it had been dark for a long time, and now finally the sun was coming out—through this opening in the mountain. Somehow it was the most beautiful sight in the world. I asked Ram—you’ll love this—I asked him if this was the Shasta Gate.”

  Eugene laughed. “Really?”

  She nodded, eager to continue. “He said it was—and I asked him what was on the other side.” All at once a look that Eugene first interpreted as pain and then realized was something else crossed her face. There was so much emotion in her voice it was difficult for her to go on. “He said...’You are, Catherine.’ And I suddenly got this flash of what he was talking about. I saw this smiling face, and arms reaching out to me...and then I realized it was my own arms—it was me. Isn’t that weird? This beautiful person was like welcoming me—and it was...it was myself.”

  “...I don’t think that’s weird at all, he said gently when he could find his voice.”

  “It seemed so much more real than just a dream. It still does. I really know this person—from somewhere. ...It was so beautiful!” She looked away suddenly. Moments later when she turned back to him, there were tears glistening in her eyes. “The look on Ram’s face was incredible. It was like this was the most precious gift he could possibly have given me.”

  They lay there awhile without talking, Catherine nestled in the cradle of his arm.

  “...You know last night when you asked why I was so interested in other people’s sexuality?” Eugene finally asked.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “I started wondering about that myself. I knew what I answered wasn’t the reason...that it affects me, like anything else...but I was afraid that what I started to say would sound like bullshit. Now I know it’s not bullshit. The main reason is that I know sex can be so much more than what we make of it...most of us. So much more than we seem able, or willing, to recognize. I knew that, even though up until last night I didn’t have the personal experience to back that up at all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Was he saying too much again? Shooting his mouth off about what words couldn’t begin to express? He didn’t care; Catherine would understand this or she wouldn’t, but he had to try to articulate it. “Have you ever heard that quote, something like: ‘The worst things are the best, corrupted’?” She nodded. “Well then, what if it’s true that sex between a man and woman offers us a way to evolve as human beings and all we do with it, other than for procreation, is use it to satisfy our animal drives and instincts?

  “I mean here we are, on the brink of self-destruction, with our only hope of survival being a dramatic increase in human consciousness, and we may have the means for that right at our fingertips. Not just the saints and geniuses among us, but the common man—and woman,” he added sheepishly. “Do you see what I mean? If this is so, isn’t it worth being concerned about?”

  “If it’s so, sure. But what if you’re making something out of it it’s not? I’ve been wrong about you in a lot of ways, Gene, I’ve learned a lot from you—in such a short time! But sex is something people have been trying to control and purify since the beginning of history. Some people, while others have just gone ahead doing it and enjoying it—fortunately. It’s like religion—more people have suffered from religious persecution than from the greed and cruelty of all the world’s tyrants.”

  “Who’s talking about religion?”

  “No one. I was just making what I think’s an obvious comparison. Usually when people start speaking in terms of ‘consciousness’ versus ‘animal instincts’ there’s some religious fervor lurking about somewhere.”

  Eugene smiled. “Don’t confuse spirituality with religion though, Catherine.”

  “What’s the big difference?”

  “Religion is spirituality institutionalized—stuffed and mounted.”

  “And spirituality?”

  “That’s just a convenient label: for the degree one allows her spirit, or her soul, to govern her life, instead of the demands of her body and ego.”

  “I still think it’s a big mistake to intellectualize about something as natural and beautiful—and pleasurable—as sex. If you want to become more ‘conscious’ or more spiritual, fine. But let sex be what it is.”

  “But what is it though—that’s the whole point. Last night when we were making love, I lost sense completely of my own personal identity and became you as much as I was myself. That’s never happened to me before—I can’t begin to tell you how beautiful it was. To get outside myself, and lose all my cares and all the emotional garbage I carry around with me...to experience life from a completely different, exhilarating perspective like th
at? Like we threw open a door together and I was able to get outside myself in a whole new way.”

  “I can understand that,” she said, smiling. “But what does that have to do with spirituality?”

  “Maybe just the first step. Which is to come out of yourself and into someone else—through your heart. That’s what I felt happened last night. It actually got to the point where it was a little disturbing.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, an edge in her voice.

  “...I felt I was experiencing something in you...” He struggled for the right words. “Something underlying the side of you I’ve gotten to know the past week or so. It seemed almost as if this was one of the reasons we came together—that maybe this was something I could help you master somehow.”

  “Eugene, what the hell are you talking about?”

  “Well, this whole thing about your father. You said yourself that it seemed to be related to me in some way. Maybe so, maybe not; but I feel as though I’ve seen you in a way I couldn’t possibly have otherwise. What could be more intimate than what we shared last night? While we were making love, I was experiencing you being fucked by me at the same time I felt myself fucking you. What an education—it was incredible! You think that doesn’t change the way you see things?

  “And then, as if I was going deeper inside you or something...I saw—or felt, from the inside, almost as if it were myself—this sad, fearful little girl. I got the feeling that maybe part of you turned away from life when you turned away from your father.”

  “Stop it!” demanded Catherine. “I don’t want to hear anymore!”

  Chapter 38

  Catherine was brushing her hair. Brushing from it all the things disturbing her, or trying to: all the figments of fear and dark fantasy, all the fragments of memory that swarmed from the depths of her mind like bats from a cave at dusk. Or like insects only her mind’s eye could see—all the more frightening because of that. And she couldn’t stop them. As soon as she’d cleared away one cloud of them another had taken its place, her mind replenishing itself from what seemed an inexhaustible source in the past. She took a deep breath: no, it was only her hair she was brushing. Only her hair.